


Yaldā Night

by notsafeforowls



Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-25
Updated: 2020-12-25
Packaged: 2021-03-10 22:08:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 665
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28304322
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/notsafeforowls/pseuds/notsafeforowls
Summary: Zari returns to the ship after spending the festival with her family.
Relationships: Nate Heywood/Zari Tomaz
Comments: 1
Kudos: 10





	Yaldā Night

The ship is dark and quiet when Zari gets home.

It’s still strange after so many months. A few tweaks of the loom of fate, and Zari has a sister as well as a brother, two sets of memories that sometimes contradict each other and sometimes merge strangely well. Once, she spent every festival alone. Now she has a mother and a father and a brother again, as well as the other Zari. And she gets home at three in the morning, carrying half a watermelon and Tupperware containers or fruit and veg.

The power’s out, though, and that’s strange. Zari switches the flashlight on her phone on so that she can see where she’s going and heads for the library.

“Gideon? Everything okay?”

“Yes, Miss Tomaz. We may have made a slight error in judgement on our way back to Washington DC which means that the ship is running on the backup power supply.”

“That translates as ‘we took a shortcut through the Bermuda Triangle and caused a power cut’” Nate calls from the library.

Yeah, that explains it a bit too well. For some reason, no one can ever resist the urge to take a ‘quick shortcut’ through the Bermuda Triangle, even though they all know that it’s going to mess the ship up for at least a day. John blames it on magic. Zari blames it on no one on the ship, including Gideon, having any impulse control.

“It’s a good thing that I ate before I came back,” Zari says as she walks into the library.

The library is lit by the soft glow of candles, casting long shadows across the bookcases and the desk. Nate’s sitting at the desk, leaning over a book and holding a candle just far enough away from it to avoid setting the pages on fire. Zari can just see a crude drawing of some sort of monster on the page, but that’s not what catches her eye.

There’s a book sitting on the edge of the desk, so old that Zari can see the cracks on the intricately embossed cover. Even though she’s never seen it on the ship before, she recognises it. Anyone would recognise Hafez’s work. She only left another book of his work at her parents’ house less than an hour ago.

“Have you read any Hafez?” Zari remembers that, in another life, her mom used to read it to her. She never read it herself. The original book was lost in that timeline, either forgotten as they fled or destroyed when they were away from one of the places they used to hide.

Now it sits in the library at her parents’ house. Times change, sometimes literally.

“Not yet. We’ve had this copy on the ship for a while and I was going to get Gideon to translate it after you mentioned it the other day. I was about to ask her when the power went out. Any recommendations?”

Zari picks up the book and carefully flips through the pages until she gets to one of her favourite poems.

“Ghazal 200. ‘Let’s enjoy our love, and not be in a hurry,” Zari reads, “And about pain of parting, let’s not worry. For the life is short and the time flies. Even the king of kings can’t escape demise.’”

Nate smiles softly. “That’s a good one.”

“I thought about it a lot when I was trying to accept what happened to my family,” Zari admits, setting the book down on the desk again and sitting on the edge of the desk beside it. “And speaking of my parents, they’re still on my case about meeting you.”

“Should I have a favourite ghazal picked out by the time I do?”

“Yes, but don’t tell them for at least a year.” Zari leans forward and kisses Nate lightly. “I hope you like watermelon and pomegranates because my parents sent me back with enough fruit and vegetables to feed the entire ship for a week.”

**Author's Note:**

> I couldn’t really find consistent translations of Hafiz’s work, so apologies if the one I used is inaccurate.


End file.
